Here. As the excerpt below shows, there is still a lot of uncertainty until the details are hammered out.

It is a macro-level deal that makes recommendations on topline discretionary spending levels for fiscal years 2014 and 2015, so the details of how Indian program funding will be affected have yet to be ironed out and released by congressional appropriators.

Indian country officials are currently widely reminding appropriators of the budget cuts tribes have faced as a result of sequestration, and tribes are encouraging a restoration of and increase in federal support.

We have also heard that the Interior and Education budgets are typically hotly contested, and thus we could end up with a continuing resolution for these agency budgets, essentially continuing last year’s budget for FY ’14.

School districts chafing under the across-the-board federal cuts known as sequestrationare about to get a reprieve: The U.S. Senate gave final approval, on a vote of 64 to 36 Wednesday to a broad budget deal that would ward off the vast majority of the impending cuts to K-12 education spending—and nearly every other federal program—for the next two years.

. . . .

School districts say the fiscal breathing room can’t come soon enough. “At least we’re hopeful now, and we haven’t been hopeful for a while,” said David Pennington, the superintendent of the 5,400-student Ponca City school district in Oklahoma. He said the district—which has a high population of Native American students from a nearby reservation and receives federal Impact Aid to make up for lost tax dollars—was largely able to avoid layoffs last year. But, he said, “we weren’t going to be able to do that going forward.”

Today’s throwback is about a discrimination lawsuit against a South Dakota School District that was settled in 2007. The case was Antoine v. Winner School District, which the ACLU and Rosebud Sioux Tribe prosecuted. A snippet from the ACLU website:

In March of 2006, the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, ACLU of the Dakotas and Attorney General of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe filed a complaint in federal district court on behalf of Native American families with children in South Dakota’s majority-white Winner School District. The class action lawsuit claimed that the schools discriminated against Native American students in disciplining them, were hostile toward Native American families, and took statements from students involved in disciplinary matters that were later used to prosecute them in juvenile and criminal courts.

The complaint, which was filed in federal district court, can be seen here. The complaint to the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Education can be seen here. Details on the Settlement can be seen here. Unfortunately, it seems as if this type of conduct from School Districts is far from uncommon. See, e.g.,here and here.

The flyer and call in number is here. The Study Group wants to hear from tribal leaders, tribal education departments, principals, teachers and parents on how to improve BIE so if you have any vested interest in this please call in.

Here. This highlights the Native American Community Academy (“NACA”) based in Albuquerque, NM. I know several staff members at NACA, and it is an excellent model that can and should be duplicated. An excerpt:

ALBUQUERQUE — For many Native American students coming out of high school, both on and off reservations, the possibility of college opportunities is viewed as highly unlikely. Many programs have been established to counter this situation with varying degrees of success.

Blending cultural and ethnic backgrounds as well as traditional and modern approaches, a charter school in New Mexico is taking Native American students into a new era of college preparation.

The Native American Community Academy (NACA) is a tuition-free public charter school serving students in middle and high school. Originally located in the Southeast Heights of Albuquerque, the school has relocated to 1000 Indian School Road NW.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said her December 11 visit to Laguna Pueblo Elementary School in New Mexico was her “first opportunity to see an Indian school directly,” reported the Albuquerque Journal.

She and a number of others, including Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn, were meeting to help inform the work of the American Indian Education Study Group. As part of the visit, they toured the school and had a roundtable with principals from other local tribally controlled schools.

Jewell saw the deteriorating school and the difficulty the school has in recruiting and retaining teachers.